The End of FUN (38 page)

I headed down the back hallway to where the dressing rooms were, but Katie wasn't there, so I wandered further until I came to a pair of metal doors and a thin shaft of sunlight. One of the doors was propped open with a woman's sandal.

There was a little covered walkway between buildings, and Katie was out there in her bare feet Hula-Hooping in full-on Meg regalia: skirt, blouse, shawl, makeup, Meg wig. They'd done a good job aging her—wrinkles, creases, bags, and even a bit of a jowl effect—and it made for a pretty jarring contrast between that and the smooth gyrations of her hips. I watched her, my brain struggling to put together the conflicting visual information.

“Oh, hi, Aaron.”

“Happy birthday.” I handed her the flowers. “There's another thing, too. I'll give it to you after the play.”

She sat down on the curb and pulled a cigarette and lighter from her apron pocket.

“Still smoking, eh?” I said.

She took a drag and looked up at me. “I'm just nervous. I think it's my dad. I forgot how much I hate performing in front of him. He's
way
too enthusiastic. Hey. If you see him, could you like sit next to him and, you know, make sure he doesn't clap at the wrong parts?”

“Sure. OK.”

But by the time I got to the seats, they were already flashing the lights and telling everyone to dim and silence all electronic devices. I don't know how many people that theater holds—not a lot, and it wasn't even half-full. It made sense, I guess. I mean what piece of theater, even a Harold Pinter masterwork, can compete with a couple hundred motorcycles?

Right before they turned the lights out, I spotted Mr. E.

I started down an aisle, but it was the wrong one and I ended up below him, about 10 feet away. It would have to do.

The curtains slid open on a darkened stage. A spotlight illuminated a table and two chairs. Behind this, a bare white wall with a single door. The door opened and a man walked onstage. He sat down at the chair and unfolded his newspaper and began to read. After a moment, a woman's voice called from offstage:

“Is that you Petey?” Pause. “Petey is that you?
Petey?
”

“What?” said the man.

“Is that you?”

“Yes, it's me.”

The door opened and Katie appeared. From somewhere in the darkness behind me came a sudden burst of clapping.

YAY! for
The Birthday Party
by Harold Pinter, whose Broadway revival production is available on FT formats. As a play it was dark and perplexing, but Katie was the shit in it. There's nothing better than watching a person doing what they do best. There really isn't. The effortlessness of it. The grace. The drama. The sexiest old lady I'd ever seen. By the time it was over I'd grown old and died with her six dozen times.

Afterwards, I found Mr. E. in the lobby by the drinking fountains, surveying the crowd, such as it was, with a big grin on his face.

“A triumph, no?”

“Oh, definitely.”

“We must celebrate.”

“Yeah, of course.”

He stood there for a moment savoring it all, then leaned in with his voice low.

“But tell me—here is what I did not understand. Why was everyone so cruel to one another? And why did they speak so slowly?”

Mr. E. insisted on taking us out to a birthday dinner for Katie, and that's how we ended up at Lucky Pedro's Bar & Grill again—the same place I'd met her all those months ago. The place was packed with bikers, and we had to wait at the bar for a table, and then a waitress came to tell us our table was ready. In order to get to the dining room you had to pass through a short hallway and a pair of hinged, saloon-style doors. So that was what we did, and that's when I saw what was waiting for me—for us—on the other side.

In the far corner there was a table.

And seated at the table there were five people.

And those five people were Evie, Dad, Sam, Isaac, and Shiloh.

Oh, God, no.

But it was true.

There they were, deep in conversation, and at first they didn't seem to notice us, and no one seemed to notice them, either, and I squinched up my eyes and started to pray that we might all continue on in our lives without the knowledge of each other's presence—and I was almost to the “amen” when I heard someone call out my name.

It was Sam, waving us over. “Howdy, strangers!”

The next thing I knew we were standing there with them, introductions were being made, and everyone was talking at once—Katie, Evie, Dad, Mr. E., Isaac—all except Shiloh, who wouldn't look up at me. I checked her status, and as I was doing so it flashed from
PARTY DOWN
to
UNAVAILABLE
.

Now, for some reason Dad and Isaac were getting out of their chairs, and for a brief, wonderful moment I thought they were getting up because they were leaving, but then I saw that they were just getting up to move the next table over to theirs.

Then incredibly we were seated, all eight of us wrapped around two tables: Evie, Isaac, Sam, Dad, Mr. E., Shiloh, Katie, and me. For a moment I felt nothing, just sat in a daze, slowly remembering myself, and I note here as a matter of medical interest that I experienced the return of sensation as a physical thing first—in the form of perspiration, then cotton mouth, detumescence, and finally my butthole shrinking down to the size of a poppy seed.

After that, everything got really vivid. Shiloh's silver necklace, the touch of Meg eyeliner Katie had missed, the reflection of candlelight in Isaac's glasses, it was all there in glorious 3D, with the contrast way up and the brightness, too—my napkin white as a road flare—everything and everyone glowing around me with a radiant finality like it was appearing for the very last time. And yet nothing happened. I mean, nothing out of the ordinary. No one stood to denounce me, or lunged at me with a knife, or burst into tears. Instead, the waitress came and took our orders, and after that I excused myself to the bathroom.

It was a dinky little room with a small, screenless window that could be reached only by standing on the toilet. The latch had been painted over—but not enough that I couldn't get it undone. I pried the window open and found myself looking onto a dark alley. An unattended motorcycle, a white Harley-Davidson Road Queen
®
Special Edition (YAY!) was parked near a blue Dumpster. Painted across the saddle in blue script was a single word:
Escape
.

From somewhere down the alley came the sound of laughter. High, musical: a woman's laughter. I never saw her, but I knew she was the owner. You could just tell—a laugh like that just
had
to have a white Harley to match. I dreamed of our escape. How she'd come laughing to her steed, and how I'd squeeze out the window and hop on behind and wrap my arms around her big leather jacket. And how she'd gun the engine and we'd ride off into the sunset to begin a new life together somewhere out west.
Way
out west. Somewhere like Japan.

Back in my seat, and everyone was talking, the conversation raging around me like a river. It was insane. There were so many horrifying things. Mr. E. was talking up Katie's birthday with my dad, and Evie and Katie were laughing like old friends about some biker they'd seen, and Sam was gabbing with Isaac about the Battle of the Bands, and everyone was just chattering away—everyone except for Shiloh, who was sitting there with a vague smile on her face, like she was remembering some old joke.

So I messaged her:

And she messaged me back, just one word:

“Second place,” Sam was saying. “Did you hear that, Aaron? The JC Wonder Excursion got second place!”

“We should've got first,” said Dad, “but the power went out.”

“You guys should play at the Cowboy Poetry Festival,” said Sam.

“Cowboy Poetry Festival?” said Isaac. “That sounds interesting.”

“Yeah, not really,” Evie explained. “Most of them aren't real cowboys. They're all originally from New Jersey or Wisconsin or
New York
—no offense. And they talk about, you know,
ropin'
and
ridin'
and
the range
and
critters
.”

“And the hardscrabble people,” said Dad.

“Right,” said Evie. “The hardscrabble people. Who work hard all day and then look out on the land and feel the world deeply.”

“Now, hold on, honey,” said Sam. “I've looked out on the land and felt the world deeply—well, I
have
.”

“Question,” said Isaac. “What's a
critter
?”

“Skunks,” said Dad. “Porcupines, raccoons. Unwanted varmints people shoot.”

“So is a rabbit a critter?” Isaac asked.

“But why would you shoot a rabbit?” said Sam.

“I'm not saying
I
would,” said Dad. “People do, though.”

“The Nevadans shoot rabbits,” said Evie. “The ‘cowboys' from Wisconsin write poems about them. So it all kind of evens out.”

“
I
wouldn't shoot a critter,” said Sam. “What on earth did a rabbit ever do to anyone?”

“They'll eat your garden down to the nub—I've seen it.”

“In Spain there are no more rabbits,” said Mr. E. “They have all died. Once, they were everywhere. Now?” He slashed his hand through the air. “Gone.”